Inverness venue MacGregor's Bar lockdown livestream show is only Scottish entry in national pub awards – up for £10,000 award
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A coronavirus lockdown online music show from MacGregors Bar in Inverness is the only Scottish nominee in its category at this year's Great British Pub Awards.
Live At Five livestreamed every night at the beginning of lockdown with music performances, YouTube fun and nightly updates from Fortrose musician Anna Massie.
It is one of six nominees for the Keep the Community Entertained, prize which will be decided by a public vote ending on August 24.
MacGregor’s Bar is up against the Ring O Bells, Bristol; The Fleece Inn, Bretforton, Worcestershire; The Swan, Clewer, Somerset; Two Brewers, Clapham and last year’s winners, The Phoenix Arts Club, London.
Bruce MacGregor said: “With lockdown, one day we were a music pub and people came to us to hear great music, and the next day we were shut!
“My partner Jo DeSylva came up with the idea of doing a wee programme picking up on the musicians who had played in MacGregor’s Bar – Kenny Jamieson from Schiehallion and Anna Massie, who had just played a gig with myself in the bar.
“Anna came in as a kind of co-presenter to begin with and then it got that people couldn’t travel so she couldn’t come into the place.”
Bruce and Jo got some equipment which meant they could make their own programme which they broadcast online on the venue’s Facebook page as a livestream at 5pm nightly for an hour.
“That allowed us to use Anna in the Black Isle as a co-presenter and Jo on the camera – which was actually an iPad stuck onto the top of a tripod, and that is as technical as it gets,” he laughed.
“There was a lot of tape being used to hold things in place!”
Bruce added: “Live At Five was pretty homespun and it was mostly about music. We got musicians to drop in videos, we had Julie Fowlis, Emily Smith, Barbara Dickson and that part of it was 'Scotland’s Big Session' which is trying to create a body of music people could play at home and learn from.
“We started off with little clips from YouTube of animals. Then it was people sending in pictures from their window because we realised we were getting a lot of correspondence from across the world, from Japan to Tennessee to Iraq and all over the Highlands.
“So we created our own little community which tuned in and we were doing it seven days a week at the beginning, but it got too much so we went down to three days a week.
“People started sending in pictures of their dinner and what they were making for dinner, so Murdo’s Dinner became a kind of regular feature.
“One person described Live At Five as ‘the Highlands' answer to Wayne’s World’. And another review was 'informative, entertaining and downright silly’.
“We are going to do a special Live At Five this Friday at 7pm with Anna Massie coming in to play and Davy Holt, so we will be broadcasting from the back bar which will be shut to the public for the hour.”
Bruce added: “We wanted to get the news out there and also felt it was time to do another gig or two online!”
The voting closes on Monday, August 24 and the awards themselves will be held online in mid-September.
If people want to vote for MacGregor’s Bar, they can do it here: https://www.greatbritishpubawards.co.uk/keeping-the-community-entertained/
